[Crowbob]

'Madam, I hope you brought a toothbrush with you today...'

Fridays are 'Show Cause' days at the local courthouse. On those days, parents are compelled to show cause for their various violations of existing court orders in family court. Typically, fathers in arrears for child support must somehow show cause for not paying. Routine stuff, really.

So, having been relieved of the burden of money, I had continued to pursue my case alone and unrepresented by counsel. After having spent hours and hours bumbling my way around the local law library, the kindly court librarian, an elderly woman tiny and of course bespectacled and quiet, finally asked who I was and what I was doing.

Hence forth, that hero of mine-Mary I think her name was, with her quiet confidence, slowly and patiently lead me through the bewildering mazes of archaic Michigan family law. Mostly silent, an economy of words apparently suiting her and her career, sprinkled upon me sparse words of wisdom, caution and conspiratorial advise. For months.

So, one sweltering Friday morning, I found myself addressing the court. That room, so crowded and hot that dozens of defendants with their dirty hands and worn work boots and longish unkempt hair sat, stood and paced in anxious submission, had spilled into the hallway just outside the heavy doors of Courtroom B.

'Your honor' I said quivering with rage and weak with fear, 'this is the sixth appearance for the plaintiff compelled to show cause for her willful violation of your order regarding my parenting time with our children...', etc.

My former wife, the mother of our children, dressed to the nines in anticipation of a long weekend with her new husband, confidently gave her side to His Honor.

The curmudgeon, nearly-retired, weary and robed in the black dress of authority, barely visible behind stacks of cases to be heard before the end of the day and the end of the week, above the quiet murmurings of a crowded room said to her, 'Madam I hope you brought a toothbrush with you today because you are spending the weekend in jail.'

What I will always remember is the sudden silence that befell that awful room.

I gathered my papers, turned to leave and saw grown men crying, lawyers with open but silent mouths and a path that had appeared as the litigants parted to let me by.

One man said to me as I rushed away from the oppression, 'Thank you.'